Amazon Annouces new 70% Royalty Option for Kindle Publishing

Looks like Amazon is getting nervous about the Apple tablet. Just in time to beat next week’s supposed announcement, Amazon has unveiled a new, Apple-like royalty option for authors and publishers publishing their eBooks through the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP).

Here’s more from Amazon:

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced details of a new program that will enable authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell. For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs. This new option will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option. This new 70 percent royalty option will become available on June 30, 2010.

Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. This new program can thus enable authors and publishers to make more money on every sale. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option, and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option.

We’ll have more on this later, but wanted to get it up quick so you could start self-publishing as soon as possible.

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